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www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 8 - Issue 6 | June 2018
InForm
Victory in Video Production
The Power is in Your Hands
The shift in content consumption patterns towards digital platforms is too massive
to ignore, says Bea Alonso, Business Development Director
for Media Logistics in Asia-Pacific and Japan...
I
t was reported in a recent study that
OTT services doubled their hours
of content offerings over the last 12
months. Additionally, a 2016 report
by Kantar TNS revealed that 64% of
connected consumers in Asia-Pacific
watch online video content daily.
As the demand for content grows,
changes are needed in the way video
is produced, managed and distributed.
Content owners and producers
should no longer be tied to individual
solutions from multiple vendors,
nor legacy systems that cannot be
integrated and are too critical to risk
replacing either.
Here we enter an era where the
power is in the hands of producers to
remould video production. They must
be enabled to customise the solutions
they need, forging the tool that helps
them stay ahead.
Round 1: Keeping consumers
contented with content
The big players know that content
is king and the kingmaker. The large
amounts spent on producing and
acquiring content is testament to this
- Netflix spends US$8 billion, HBO
spends US$2 billion, and Facebook
and Apple both spend around US$1
billion. But simply having content is
not the be-all and end-all. Regardless
of size, media companies are also
searching for strategies to supply the
right content to relevant audiences
via the most suitable channel and in
appropriate volumes.
Yet, not all players have unlimited
resources to produce and acquire
enough content that can attract
audiences and sustain their interest.
Round 2: High-quality content
on low quantity time
Manual content creation and
distribution for all players alike is
unfeasible when companies are trying
to get their content to the market
faster. Even if production units could
keep up, the next challenge of how to
monetise content for a longer period
and extend its shelf life presents itself.
Media companies often allocate
significant resources and marketing
funds to drive traffic to their website,
but if content is ill-suited and low in
quality, viewers will lose attention,
culminating in a high drop-off rate for
that piece of content that took hours
of production time. A worse reality is
when viewers flock to one of the other
competing sites out there.
There is a need to get it right with
audiences and this cannot be based
on intuition alone. Rich data and
insights into viewing patterns give
content owners an idea of what their
consumers want to watch, and thus
their content ROI. They can then
base their future content investment
decisions based on data and focus on
desirable and high-quality content.
Changes in how video is produced and distributed are needed
Take down: You know you best
What then is the solution in the face
of all this production mayhem? In
essence, it is a customisable solution
for media companies, created by the
media companies themselves.
There are multiple pain points
that content companies face, from
ineffective use of resources, to the
inability to modernise and align
existing workflows without replacing
them, to the lacklustre insights
gathered from poor, outdated or
unsynchronised data sets. Yet, one has
to be part of daily operations to truly
understand these woes.
A case that illustrates how each
content company faces its own
nuanced set of issues is Korea
Content Platform (KCP). KCP is a
joint-venture between three major
Korean broadcasters that offer
exciting K-Drama content via an
SVOD service. The company realised
that they had complex business rules
requiring manual processes in their
operations, and that resulted in errors
and missed deadlines to distribute
content. Moreover, with a high volume
of metadata and assets coming from
different partners, it was difficult
to get visibility into their content
workflow.
KCP needed a solution that
allowed for the automation of media
operations and to prepare large
amounts of content in a timely
manner. These specific pain points
Video production is being remoulded
were met with a configurable video
platform that enabled KCP to collect
assets, information and different types
of metadata from their partners, and
automate workflows to process and
manage them for publishing. The
platform also lets users create and
change business rules behind the
processes and offers robust reporting
features for the monitoring of media
operations effectively and generation
of reports on how their content
business is performing.
A configurable video platform
is thus the key to meeting highly
specific needs. These platforms
provide applications that let content
companies build their solutions or
have built-in API infrastructure that
allow for the creation and hosting
of the company's own apps. These
solutions should cater to various types
of data throughout content supply
chains to create better, more targeted
content.
Sustaining the dollars
Just like KCP, companies that get the
solution they need through delivery
platforms that are open and extensible
will be able to streamline, connect
and power the entire supply chain
from production to profit. This way
media companies can accelerate the
efficiency of their content supply chain
towards becoming more flexible, and
ultimately, more profitable.